Apex: Nexus Trilogy Book 3 (Nexus Arc) Kindle Edition

I only read Nexus and Crux recently (earlier this year), and was thrilled to see I had only to wait until May for the third and final book in the series. Start with Nexus, and read the entire trilogy. It's full of philosophy, hacking, action - but above all it is extremely thought provoking. The perils and promise of what the "nano-drug" Nexus and associated inter-connectivity would mean.

The final book did not disappoint - raising the stakes, building suspense - I stayed up until 1AM to finish it. So glad I found this series.

The story is fantastic, and I would give 5 stars except for editing.The first two books had a clearly marked division between scenes- an asterisk, a row of spaces, an icon, something to show that the scene has shifted. Not so in Apex. The text rolls into the next scene without any indication of change, and can be very confusing. The reader must backtrack to find where the change of scene was, to make any sense of who is speaking or what is happening. This will probably be corrected in a later version.

Also I found it very odd that throughout the entire series the hero is referred to as 'the boy, yet in Apex we learn that he is 'not quite 30'. He is definitely not a boy, and I did not care for that name.

Otherwise, I was tremendously impressed with the plot and storyline of the book and the series. This is something that could very easily come to fruition in the very near future. When thoughts can be digitized, when brainwaves can be stored or read as digitalinformation, almost all the events in this series become possible. We cannot imagine yet all the potential uses for such technology. Combine this with super-computing, and the future is unbelievable.

In this brilliant sci-fi trilogy, a new post-human species emerges—and what happens isn't pretty.

Demonstrating intimate knowledge of science in a brilliant sci-fi trilogy
The Nexus Trilogy is especially intriguing because Naam is both an accomplished computer scientist and a science fiction author of considerable skill. All three novels in his trilogy are grounded in science. Contemporary research in such fields as neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology suggests the possibility of a post-human future that might resemble the picture he paints. But the books of the trilogy are set in 2040-41, and Naam freely confesses in "The Science of Apex" at the conclusion of the final volume that he would be "surprised if, by 2040, we have brain computer interfaces anywhere near the sophistication" of the technology around which the three novels are centered. Naam implies that he might better have set his story at the end of the 21st century.

A picture of the post-human future
In other words, the Nexus Trilogy gives us some sense of what might be in store for us down the road, give or take a half-century or so. Naam envisions the convergence of neuroscience, computer programming, Buddhist meditation techniques, biotechnology, artificial intelligence, and nanotechnology to create Nexus 5, a drug-like substance that diffuses nanobots throughout a human brain, enabling the individual to communicate telepathically with other Nexus users, even over very great distances. Some combination of these technologies with cloning has also permitted the creation of trans-human supersoldiers who are stronger, faster, and smarter than human soldiers. At the same time, refinements in the programming of the nanobots and access to a constellation of quantum supercomputers has led a supremely gifted Chinese scientist to transcend even the capabilities conferred by Nexus and elevate herself into what can only be called a new species: a post-human. This new post-human species quickly demonstrates how very far behind mere humans are left.

The Nexus Trilogy unfolds
Nexus, the first book of this brilliant sci-fi trilogy, portrays the impact of the development and spread of Nexus 5 and the fierce and violent resistance of both the American and Chinese governments. The two countries have led the rest of the world to ban the drug's use and imprison anyone found to be using it (including babies born with it in their systems). Crux, the second book, focuses on the life-and-death struggle of Nexus' creators to evade capture and inevitable torture and death at the hands of governments desperate to stamp out its use. In Apex, the final volume, war between human and post-human breaks out and comes within a hair's breadth of forever destroying human civilization.

All three books are densely packed, with a huge cast of characters who are followed in short bursts that alternate throughout. The suspense is palpable. The violence is unrelenting.

"Nexus" is, and always will be, the best book in this series for a variety of reasons, but "Apex" is right behind it in quality.

"Apex" is a whirlwind of cutting edge sci-fi, political intrigue, action, and ethical quandaries. While "Crux" was perhaps the best in the series at really digging into the merits and pitfalls of competing idealogies and ethics surrounding this technology, "Apex" is a good follow-up to that. But the action, the pace is what steals the show in this book.

The primary villian in this book is The Avatar, the cy-borg like shard of Su Yong's broken mind. The PLF factors into this book as well, with a somewhat satisfying turn of events involving them at the beginning. However, the primary scene of focus is Shanghai and China and events escalating there.

Overall, a very good book. A very good conclusion to the story and world of Nexus. The ending is very bitter, somewhat sweet, and very sad; it may in fact bring a tear to some eyes. But just about everyone's story gets a final send-off before the last page.

A few problems with this book, though, none of which necessarily hamper the overall story. Of course, my biggest problem with Nexus has been the bandwidth problem. Shortly after the movie "Avatar" came out, scientists pointed out that we do not, nor will we have any time soon, the necessary wireless fidelity or bandwidth to transmit human consciousness; there's just too much simultaneous data. Now you could say, "Yeah but human consciousness is just a fraction of the entire scope of the human brain, and at any given time you're only 'sending' so much". True, and this is my other issue with the books: if Nexus had been limited to basically a cell phone in the brain, it would have been fine. But the ongoing issues of turning people into zombies with Nexus, with pushing emotions and vision and full sensory data over things like a CELLULAR network is a bit hard to accept.

Finally there's the issues of sharing all of this brain data through cellular and other wireless networks. This book of course assumes that our wireless networks will become flawless in the future (HA!), that somehow everyone everywhere would, in mere months or weeks, figure out how to proxy this data through the Internet, that the Internet would be able to support this extra load, that authorities wouldn't be able to easily detect those kind of data streams and shut down servers or even trace them back and arrest people, and that various other bits of infrastructures would come to exist so quickly.

To be clear, I would have been just fine with the ideas dreamed up in "Nexus", of people just being telepathic when near each other, of close-range peer-to-peer mind sharing. It's when you get into the whole worldwide mind-streaming thing that things get strained and you have to have to suspend a lot of disbelief. This is of course not even touching on the fraility of human memory and that eyeballs are not camers ...

Despite all that, again, 5 star book. Not enough problems to really warrant any loss there, and what the book strains in believability, it more than makes up for in emotion and action and pace. Definitely a good close to the series. I look forward to Ramez Naam's next story.